Since about 1954, the Marx Brothers have made a fair number of appearances in the pages of Mad Magazine. In 1999, Mad released a collection of all issues through December 1998 on CD ROM and thus was Totally Mad born. As near as I can tell the title has gone out of print. At least its "official site" has nothing to offer but links to Warners and no information on how to purchase. However, it's still relatively common and easy to get at the usual places (e.g., eBay, Amazon, etc.) for $30 or less (CHEAP!). Anyway, after getting a copy, one of the first things I tried was an extensive search using the CD collection's excellent keyword search and turned up many references to the brothers, both individually and as a group. More often than not these images were part of the background or used for a visual gag secondary to the story, but sometimes the brothers were at the center of the story.

I immediately shot off an email to the folks who created the CD, asking if I could use selected images from the CD ROM collection on my Marx Brothers web site... No reply. So I wrote a snail letter to the magazine itself... Again, no reply. Well, I'm not one to take "no reply" for an answer, so I decided to go ahead with it anyway, figuring if E.C. and Warners want to go after a fershlugginer web monkey like myself they can have at it. (Understanding, of course, that I'm not making any money off this particular feature, okay guys?)

Anyway, in hopes of placating them somewhat, here's the first copyright notice for your enjoyment:

Since I can't think of any more logical method of presentation, I'm going to show these to you in chronological order. As I mentioned before, the search engine included in this 7-CD set is exhaustive -- to the point that it sometimes points out Marx Brothers references where they don't actually exist. F'rinstance, I threw out any appearances of ambiguous-looking gents with glasses, moustache and cigar as not representing Groucho unless I was relatively sure by the context that this was the case. And a word to the Zeppo and Gummo fans out there: I'm afraid these two never appeared in the pages of Mad. NB: These files cover up to two pages and can sometimes be pretty large.

One more thing. While I thought I caught every reference (even some that didn't exist), I have found that the guys who fed the search engine missed at least one (it took a Marx mailing list member to point it out to me). So if you know of any reference to the Marxes I haven't included here, please send email to madmarxness@whyaduck.com. (You can also send any questions or comments to this address. Anyway, here goes...

The 1950s

In 1925, Harpo was the first Marx Brother to appear in a commercially-released film called "Too Many Kisses." In 1954 he became the first of the brothers to appear in an issue of Mad Magazine. See if you can spot him in the opening panel from Mad's cop show parody...

The second Marx appearance in Mad was not by a brother at all. Join us in a game of duck hunt in the Sherlock Holmes spoof...

Groucho made his first appearance in the background of a TV show broadcast from a popular New York joint...

Groucho shows some unusual political affiliations as we find him on the back cover of Mad in attendance at a rally promoting...

For the first time on the pages of Mad, The Three Marx Brothers appeared together, once again in the company of...

Who looks like a muscle-bound hulk, acts like Robin Williams and does Groucho impressions? Well it ain't...

This is a personal favorite. Not only is it a fine sendup, but it features the one and only reference to Margaret Dumont in the pages of Mad through 1998 (I checked). Plus, the Mad "Dept." is such a dynamite pun, it would've been a much better title for the series than...

Finally, Mad invokes the spirit of Groucho in this sendup of a comic strip, where Mad asks...

Well, that's it. It's fitting to note that the last reference to the Marxes on this CD-ROM collection happened to appear in the final magazine in the collection. This bodes well for further appearances of the Marxes in the pages of this most enjoyable magazine.